Sailing
Who really wants to sail the seas with just a light sloop? Not me. You will want at least 300-800 coins saved up to buy your second ship(300 for a galleon, 800 for a frigate, and unless you are really desperate for a better ship and dont want to wait for 800 gold, get the light frigate). There are more expensive ships, but you need to work on your sailing skill (level five for regular ships, fifteen for war ships)before you can captain these beauties. Buying your ship Find the ship merchant on Tortuga, he's on the beach right in front of the bow of a ship buried in the sand. He's at the opposite end of the beach from where the jail and guards live. Buy one of the first three ships from him and this step is complete. There is a quest in the beginning which can get you a free ship, but it's really small.It's a Light Sloop. Assemble your crew While you can be the captain of a ship by yourself, it's going to be much more fun and effective if you have a crew to set sail with you! Invite others to join your crew! Be sure to tell them you already own a ship and you'll help them get their sea legs. If they haven't read this, they will be lost without your guidance on the high seas. Deploy and board First, you'll need to board your ship from one of the small dinghies you find typically on beaches or next to docks. Walk or swim up next to the dinghy until a green circle appears around it with instructions to press Shift in order to board. After pressing Shift, you can either Launch a ship of your own or else Board a ship being sailed by another member of your crew. Help the others in your crew get on board using chat or Whisper to help them if necessary. People can also board a ship already sailing by using the Go To option for anybody, captain or otherwise, who is already on board. In this way, people can and often do board a ship already sailing. Assign positions and set sail As the captain, it's your job to tell these scallywags what to do! Tell each crew member which cannon to man. Your strategy should either be to have everyone manning the guns on one side and leaving the other empty, or spread them out to both sides. As the captain, you'll be sailing her, so you'll need to keep in mind how many cannons you have manned on each side when attempting to sink a ship! Make your way up to the wheel on the poop deck. Everyone presses Control to take command of a cannon or wheel. Now you're sailing!!! Sail for plunder! You're going to sail around the seas looking for Navy ships to sink. Use the W, A, S, D keys to sail your ship until you spot one, either on the screen or on your compass. Approach the enemy ship keeping in mind where your cannons are firing from. Do you want to broadside her, or "cross the T" ? you decide! Make sure you keep your crew informed what the target is, you don't want everyone always shooting everything or you might end up fighting more ships at once than you can handle! Firing your cannons If you are manning a cannon, it's your job to sink those pesky Navy ships! Aim your cannon and fire away! After three shots, you'll have to reload. As you sink more and more, you'll gain cannon skill and get to upgrade your shots, with either shooting faster or doing more damage. Like man to man combat, you can use the right mouse button to bring up special shots, however there is no chaining of attacks. One of the special moves is the grappling hook. This is used when very close to an enemy vessel for when you want to entangle the ships for some boarding action. You shouldn't just use these unless your captain tells you to "prepare to board me Hearties!" Grape Shot/Chain Shot/Flaming Shot There are some special ammo types you can buy in Port Royale from the cannoneer. Unlike the grappling hooks, these are not accessed via the right mouse button, rather once you've bought them you can select them by using the mouse scroll wheel. If you aren't high enough level, they won't show up. I think its lvl 4 or 5 for grape shot and lvl 8 for the flaming shot. The grape shot is great for killing guards on the decks of enemy ships and you can get a lot more cannon skill ups by clearing the decks before sinking the ships. Chain shot is traditionally used for taking out the rigging/sails of a ship, but I don't see it really working all that well in game yet, especially since enemy ships sail around without any sails all the time. The flaming shot sets the enemy ships ablaze for a bit doing extra damage, but nothing spectacular here. Firing broadsides As the captain while steering the ship, you can press the right mouse button to bring up a special menu to fire your broadsides. This means all cannons on either the left or right side of your ship will fire. These will fire whether you have a crew member manning the cannons or not (if you look closely these are actually a separate bank of cannons mounted below the deck.) The cannons will all fire more or less straight out, so its quite tricky to aim and hit another ship unless you are very close. It takes a relatively long time for your cannons to reload when used in this manner. The good news is that your left and right sides are on separate cooldowns, so you can fire, turn your ship, and fire again. The bad news is this makes for boring and unrealistic ship combat as you tend to just sit in one spot and turn back and forth unloading over and over. The ugly news is you make it very difficult for any of your crew manning cannons to hit anything if you're constantly spinning in circles! It takes a long time to sink a ship with just your broadside cannons, but it seems to be the only way to increase your sailing skill. Sailing Skillups As you get more points in sailing, you can spend them on upgrading your broadside shots to do 5% more damage. *'Broadside Left': Fire left broadside. Upgrade to increase Left Broadside Cannonball damage! *'Broadside Right': Fire right broadside. Upgrade to increase Right Broadside Cannonball damage! *'Full Sail': Coaxes a short burst of speed out of the ship! *'Come About': Allows your ship to make a hard sudden turn! *'Open Fire': Increase crew's cannon damage! *'Ramming Speed': Bear down upon an enemy vessel and ram it into splinters! *'Take Cover': Create a shield that protects your ship and crew from incoming fire! *'Windcatcher': Create a shield that protects your ship and crew from incoming fire! *'Tacking': Superior knowledge of the rigging allows you to turn more rapidly. Improves ship turning radius! *'Treasure Sense': Your endeavors always seem to uncover more gold. Increases the quality of cargo drops! *'Taskmaster': A harsh taskmaster can get his crew to reload his cannons faster. Decreases recharge time for Broadsides! Of course, you will still have to spend a skill point in these skills for them to work! Solo sailing Can't find any crew? Well you can actually do everything yourself, it's just not going to be as fun or effective. Pressing ESC while at the wheel of your ship will disengage you from the wheel and then you can run over to a cannon to shoot. Pressing ESC at the cannon will disengage you from that so you can go back to sailing. However, there is a 'bug' where sometimes pressing ESC will just close down the game, so that's really a pain. Plunder Each time you sink a ship you can get one or more pieces of plunder. The higher level of the enemy ship, the more plunder it can potentially give you. Different ships you are sailing can hold different amounts of plunder, when you get full you should head back to a port to sell and divide the plunder. (Or if the game is really lagging/crashing, you might want to head back more often!) Sail back close to the beach at a port and a Docking icon will appear in the lower right corner. Press this button and you will pop off your ship. The game will tally up all the killing and plundering you did and divy the treasure up amongst the crew, after all, that's why we all became pirates!!! Arrrrr!!! Boarding Enemy Ships So you want a little melee combat while out sailing? We'll here is how to go about boarding an enemy ship. First, you can only board larger enemy ships, like Galleons, that are being escorted by smaller ship(s). You must sink the smaller escort ships first. If after sinking them the larger ship gets a pirate flag icon over it's main mast, you'll be able to board her! In fact, that's your only option now, you cannot sink her no matter how much you blast away at her. You must shoot the hull down to zero, and at that time, four small green vertical circles will appear across the side of the ship. Have your cannoneers switch to grappling hooks and fire at those circles. Once you get a few lines attached, you'll see the ropes extend between both boats. Then you will get a pop up saying Board ship with your crew? Press the ok button and you'll swing over to the enemy deck. Press F1-F3 to pull out your favorite weapon and get to work! Ship Combat Tips bEDIT : This is quite untrue at current, as npc ships are quite accurate and also at higher levels (above level 7) some use explosive shot and can sink your ship quite quickly! (personally i have not noticed the game crashes refered to here, but have only been playing 6 hours a day) Lastly, You can repair at most inhabited islands, i.e. Cuba, Port Royal, Tortuga, but you can unload cargo on any island. *end edit*/b Right now the enemy ships are pretty buggy and even if they are shooting back at you, they miss practically every time. So for fastest leveling, just go after the biggest ships you can find. They take longer to sink, but you get tons more reputation for it. Also, you get a share of each ship you damaged, so if you're on a high population server, you can do pretty well just sailing around and taking pot shots at every single ship you see. Also, since the game crashes so often right now, I recommend running back to shore and anchoring every time you get a piece of plunder. It's very quick to do once you get the hang of it, and it sure beats losing your hard earned plunder when the game crashes! You can sell it anywhere you can drop anchor, however, you can't actually repair your ship unless you anchor close to the docks in Port Royale.